When 6th edition brought in challenges, I hated them . In Ork squads they really hurt, because the nob would often do most of the work. A mass of boyz would pile into combat, flail helplessly and cause a wound or 2, then the Nob would swing with his power klaw and kill 2 or 3 on his own, possibly doubling someone out with instant death.
Then Nobs could be challenged. Against anything with a power weapon or any assault based character, the Nob would almost certainly die before getting to swing. Ultimately, Nobs in boyz squads fell out of favor because they were too easy to pick off. It wasn't even wroth it to bring them.
If you charged a lone character, the rest of your squad had to sit around (wasting their +1 attack on the charge and +1 from furious charge) while the Nob got crushed. No amount of rerolls will help when you don't even get a save to roll. Challenges were really limiting since Orks
have low init and frequenly limited to no armor.
It never made sense to me from a fluff standpoint. Why would the boyz sit around cheering on the nob. What honor binds them from joining in the fight. It's counter-fluff. Orks (Snikrot especially) would be all too happy to stab someone in the back while they were engaged in a one on one battle.
Similarly, why would Tyranids do the same. They are an extra-galactic threat that knows no honor, just consumption. My favorite example of this absurdity is the swarmlord gets charged by a grot and a runtherd. The runtherd issues a challenge and has to accept (by himself). He pastes the runtherd but his attacks don't carry over so the lone grot passes his morale and the swarmlord is locked in combat. In what logical scenario does the swarmlord not kill the grot.
Another absurd scenario, this time Orks on Black Templar. A squad of 10 Nob bikers (could be troops previously) charge into 2 scouts on an objective. The nobz should easily win with 5 power klaws and 4 big choppas (20 str 9 ap2 and 16 str7 at WS5). The Templar scout sgt issues a challenge. The Ork player accepts with his painboy which, admittedly would be a huge mistake, but not one that is readily apparent. The squad amidst all their attacks turns the lone scout into chum scoring 10 rounds, 11 of which are AP2. Uh-oh the scout sgt scores 2 rends (Templar chapter tactics) and the painboy fails his FNP save. The orks lost combat by 1, fail leadership and then get swept (int 4 on scouts vs 3 on Nobz). That 22pt scout squad just defeated 650pts of Nobz. All because of stupid challenges.
With 7th edition, the changes were positive. Challengers are not considered in base to base solely with each other, so MSS can be randomized to other members of the squad. Wounds can carry over out of challenges. Wounds can also carry into the challenge, after all other non-challengers have been removed. This can help orks and makes sense that they aren't just standing around absurdly cheering in the middle of a raging battle.
Still though, the idea of an ork honoring a challenge is silly. They want to get to krumpin' and don't usually care who it is. If an opponent issues a challenge, why even bother listening. The Mad Dok is mad, he doesn't care if you insult him maternal spore pod, he's going to kill whatever is in front of him. He certainly isn't going to step past some genestealers to go toe to toe with a broodlord who 'issued' a challenge. For chaos space marines and dark eldar it also doesn't make any sense for them to honor challenges.
It's as if there is some medieval honor system in the galaxy. Considering this came from fantasy, it follows logically that this what they consider it. To me, it doesn't make sense in the grim-dark future.
Then something clicked. With the way challenges work now, it doesn't have to be an honor system. Rather than think of it as a character issuing a challenge, I think of it as a character singling another character out. Now it makes more sense.
The Space Marine captain isn't asking the Nob to challenge him, he's just heading straight for him because he knows he's the most likely to kill him than the tactical squad he's with. The boyz in the squad aren't standing around waiting for the challenge to finish, they just attack everyone else first because they're better targets, then start in on the captain.
The Catachan platoon commander stands in front of his troops hoping to let them escape when a bloodthirster charges into them. Unfortunately, the BT decapitates him, then proceeds to kill more of the squad before they eventually scatter never to regoup.
This explanation sits a lot better with me. Singling out characters with other characters is realistic. It's something I can live with, even if I don't always like the results
Of course, if characters could single out banner holders and special weapons it would make even more sense, but not everything is perfect. The 5th edition system where special weapons were always the last to die made some sense to me since it just meant that someone else picked up the special weapon and continued fighting. As much as removing wounds from the front hurts Orks, I don't miss wound allocation shenanigans (even though Orks were one of the main benefactors).
No comments:
Post a Comment